“From all the guys serving, from all my friends and acquaintances, we all ask him to run in the presidential elections, to which he replied that times can be difficult, but for now he will be with the people and will run for office,” mentioned Lt. Col. Artyom Zhoga, the commander of the ultranationalist Sparta Battalion.
The low-key announcement serves the fastidiously orchestrated objective of exhibiting “how modest Putin is,” so busy with actual affairs amid the invasion of Ukraine that he doesn’t have time to parade his political ambition in entrance of tv cameras, mentioned Tatiana Stanovaya, the founding father of the R.Politik, a Russian political consultancy now based mostly in Paris.
“Everyone is surprised that this is a strange announcement and that there is no video — but this is a sign of times. There is no time for campaigning, Putin will tell you,” Stanovaya mentioned in a Telegram put up. “I think the video will be shown eventually. It will just all be less pretentious and official.”
“The nomination is bursting with symbols: the heroes, the ‘fathers of Donbas’ want to see Putin again as president. … Putin chose war; war chooses Putin. That is, it is not so much about prosperity as it is about survival. The stakes were raised as high as possible,” she added.
About an hour after Zhoga’s preliminary remarks to state reporters have been carried by companies, Russian state TV aired a clip of the officer’s dialog with Putin through which the president says he has had “different thoughts at different times” about operating once more earlier than curtly saying it’s “time to make decisions” and confirms his candidacy.
“On behalf of our all our people, our Donbas, our reunited territories, wanted to ask you to take part in the presidential elections because there is so much work and, thanks to your work and your decision, we got freedom, the right of choice, and we want to take part in the elections,” Zhoga mentioned, referring to japanese Ukrainian territories occupied by Russian forces. “You are our president. We are your team. We need you, and Russia needs you.”
Zhoga’s Sparta Battalion is a pro-Russian ultranationalist pressure shaped in Donetsk in 2014 throughout a Kremlin-supported insurgency in japanese Ukraine, which has been built-in into the Russian armed forces because the full-scale invasion of Ukraine final 12 months. Zhoga was among the many audio system at Putin’s March 2022 pro-war rally in Moscow. Zhoga acknowledged that “our task is to liberate our land from Nazi people,” echoing a false narrative that Ukraine is run by neo-Nazis in search of to destroy Russia.
The pro-Kremlin analyst Sergei Markov mentioned the selection of location — after presenting Hero of Russia awards to troopers on the Kremlin — was an indication that the president deliberate to contest the election by placing the battle on the middle of his marketing campaign.
“Putin is going to the polls as the military leader of a warring country,” he wrote on Telegram. “This means that any concept of ‘getting away from the military agenda,’ or ‘focusing on internal social questions,’ has been discarded. And rightly so.”
For Putin, a give attention to home insurance policies would have been defeatist, he continued. “Putin abandoned a defeatist strategy and chose the image of a military leader that would provide him with a landslide victory.”
Putin has successfully dominated Russia since 2000, briefly swapping locations with Dmitry Medvedev for a time period in 2008 as a result of he was constitutionally barred from serving a 3rd consecutive time period, and he loomed as the facility behind Medvedev whereas holding the function of prime minister. Before the 2012 election, Putin pushed by a constitutional reform that eliminated the constitutional limits and prolonged the presidential time period from 4 years to 6.
Putin’s new run has been anticipated since 2020, when he took a step additional in bending the Russian structure and orchestrated adjustments that enable him probably to remain in energy till 2036, when he will likely be 84 years outdated.
The announcement means that, like autocrats in China and North Korea, Putin is not going to go away workplace within the foreseeable future and probably not in his lifetime. In 2017, Putin quietly handed the mark because the longest-serving Russian chief after Joseph Stalin, who led the Soviet Union for nearly three a long time between 1924 and 1953, beating Leonid Brezhnev, who dominated for 18 years.
Putin’s long run in energy makes him a part of a membership of strongmen who’ve dominated for many years, lots of them African dictators, together with Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo of Equatorial Guinea, in energy since 1979; and Paul Biya of Cameroon, president since 1982; and Uganda’s Yoweri Museveni, president since 1986. The solely leaders of former Soviet states in energy for longer than Putin are Emomali Rahmon of Tajikistan and Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus, each of whom have dominated because the early Nineties. Both are shut allies to Putin.
Putin’s election in March is assured in Russia’s highly-skewed election system, through which the Kremlin controls virtually all information media, bars anti-Kremlin figures from operating in elections, and has jailed Putin’s main opponents and pro-democracy activists, forcing 1000’s of activists to flee the nation to keep away from arrest.
Russian elections have lengthy been marked by sweeping irregularities, together with poll stuffing and delays in poll counts. Other options introduced in since 2020, together with elections held over three days and digital voting, have made the system much less clear and extra open to manipulation.
Under the state propaganda marketing campaign, the Kremlin has maintained excessive help for Putin and for the battle in Ukraine that now defines his presidency, portraying the battle as a battle for Russia’s survival towards a venal West decided to dismember the nation and gobble up its sources.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/12/08/russia-putin-president-2024-election/